The Cosmopolitanisms of Citizenship

The Cosmopolitanisms of Citizenship

Chapter:

(p.230)
17 The Cosmopolitanisms of Citizenship

Source:

Cosmopolitanisms

Author(s):

Jeremy Waldron

Publisher:

NYU Press

DOI:10.18574/nyu/9781479829682.003.0018

Recovering the cosmopolitanism of the medieval Catholic university, Jeremy Waldron offers an eloquent update of what Hollinger would call the “old” cosmopolitanism that is both particular and universal. For him, differences have been overvalued. Whatever their usefulness to a grade school teacher introducing children to the larger world, differences may not define how actual people around the world see themselves or experience the world. Monotheisms link very diverse societies. Scientific knowledge is universal: there is no Swedish physics or Namibian chemistry, just chemistry and physics. World trade has made many commodities universal. These are the real material basis for a cosmopolitanism that need not after all deny its founding universalism. The critics of Martha Nussbaum are wrong to think that cosmopolitanism requires a world state. Religion, science, and commerce are doing the job of grounding it and making it concrete.

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